PRESTON TYLK A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2001 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2
"You better face it, Mr. Tylk," the seedy detective, aptly named Dick (Dennis Farina), warns his new client. "Your number is up." The sharp-tongued Farina, looking like an unemployed longshoreman, is the best part of writer/director Jon Bokenkamp's PRESTON TYLK.
With his usual uneasy edge, Luke Wilson (BLUE STREAK) plays the film's lead, Preston Tylk. When we meet Preston, he is borderline happy for a few seconds until his wife, Emily (Mili Avital), announces that she's been having an affair, which is now over. A few seconds after that the phone starts ringing, and, you guessed it, it's her ex-lover, Jonathan (Norman Reedus), demanding a recount. As the story's villain, Reedus delivers an incredibly bland performance, which effectively cancels out the positive effects of Farina's work in the picture.
>From there, Preston's life sinks into the abyss. After his wife is killed, he is chased by the cops and by Jonathan, who has an uncanny and unbelievable ability to follow him like a shadow. He enlists Dick's help in obtaining some key evidence. Most of the movie is a standard chase picture with Jonathan and the cops pursuing Preston and Dick all over town. One thing is certain. Tacoma, Washington, where the story is set, has the best police force in the entire nation. Whenever they are needed, a half dozen cop cars show up within seconds. This all makes for a thriller that stretches plausibility a bit too often.
The impressive score by Kurt Kuenne (SCRAPBOOK) does a terrific job of setting the mood. He was at our screening and filled in some details about the production. The score, for example, only accounted for twelve thousand of the almost two million dollar budget. The surprise was that their distributor, in a deal that baffles the filmmakers, will be retitling the movie to BAD SEED when it is released this summer directly to DVD and video. This is a movie without anyone that could be so called. He asked us to play a game to guess who the bad seed could be. We couldn't come up with any plausible candidates.
PRESTON TYLK runs 1:33. It is rated R for violence and language and would be acceptable for most teenagers.
Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com
Want free reviews and weekly movie and video recommendations via Email? Just send me a letter with the word "subscribe" in the subject line.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews